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Oconto Falls High School senior Stephanie Peitersen reacts to the news that she has been awarded a $7,500 scholarship as the first-place female winner of the Wisconsin Sports Awards Scholarship Contest. (Contributed photo)

Stephanie Peitersen was surprised last week by a group of special visitors with a big check to further her education.

Peitersen, a standout athlete and active student at Oconto Falls High School, was the first-place winner in the statewide Wisconsin Sports Awards Scholarship Contest for a $7,500 scholarship. The contest is sponsored by Cousins Subs and its Make It Better Foundation.

She will be recognized at the Wisconsin Sports Awards event in Milwaukee on Aug. 22. The Wisconsin Sports Awards is an exclusive VIP event celebrating the finest Wisconsin athletics in high school, collegiate and professional arenas.

Peitersen was selected as a finalist due to her exceptional academic acumen, volunteer work and achievements in three Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association (WIAA) sanctioned sports — volleyball, softball and basketball.

The Gillett High School forensics team participated in the Wisconsin High School Forensic Association District Festival at Marinette High School on March 17. The competition consists of two levels, subdistrict and district, where performers must achieve performance standards to advance to a state festival in Madison.

In three rounds of competition, performers must earn two scores of 20 or higher out of 25 possible points to advance. All 31 Gillett performers in 15 entries qualified for the state festival, which will be held April 20-21.

The Gillett Middle School forensics team performed well at two recent festivals.

The team, coached by Tami McQuillan and Don Olderman, competed at a Level I Festival in Suring on Jan. 29. All performers received straight A’s and qualified to participate in a Level II Festival.

On March 5, the team traveled to Wabeno for the district Level II competition. More than 100 students from eight area schools participated in the festival. The Gillett Middle School team had outstanding performances and brought home 25 A’s and one B in the categories of play-acting, prose, storytelling, news reporting and readers’ theater.

Area public schools are planning to give students a spring break around Good Friday and Easter.

Gillett, Pulaski and Oconto public school districts will be closed for the week beginning Monday, March 26, with classes resuming on Monday, April 2, for Gillett and Oconto. Pulaski has scheduled a staff development day with no classes April 2.

Oconto Falls and Suring public school districts have scheduled staff development days on Thursday, March 29. School will not be in session.

Lena, Oconto Falls and Suring schools will be closed for spring break on Friday, March 30, and Monday, April 2. Classes will resume at the regular time Tuesday, April 3.

The Coleman School District will close for spring break from Thursday, March 29, through Monday, April 2, with a staff in-service day Tuesday, April 3. Classes will resume Wednesday, April 4.

A symposium at Washington Middle School in Oconto Falls next week will feature a Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History traveling exhibition titled “Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America.” (Contributed photo)

Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s most visionary founding fathers, is with us every day — not only in our wallets on the $10 bill, but also in the republic’s most vital institutions.

From the writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution to the creation of our country’s economic system, Hamilton foresaw the future of the nation that he helped build.

He was an immigrant from the Caribbean, a disadvantaged orphan who became a war hero, a self-made man who rose to become a framer of the Constitution and architect of the American financial system, and an idealist who was killed at the age of 47 in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.

On March 15, seventh-grade students at Washington Middle School in Oconto Falls will present a symposium in which students will present the life and accomplishments of this amazing individual.

Pulaski High School is staging the musical “42nd Street,” which tells the story of Peggy Sawyer, a young performer who gets her big break on Broadway in the 1930s.

The musical – written by Michael Stewart, Mark Bramble, Harry Warren and Al Dubin – will be staged at Pulaski High School at 7 p.m. Feb. 10, 2 p.m. Feb. 11, 7 p.m. Feb. 17 and 2 p.m. Feb. 18. Tickets are $8 and are available at the Pulaski News office at the high school, or by calling Laurie Fischer at 920-822-6800.

The musical, which features the standards “Lullaby of Broadway” and “42nd Street,” has a lot of singing, dancing and acting, said director Kathryn Brown, the school’s choir instructor.

“It might not be familiar to some, but don’t let that stop you from coming,” Brown said. “There is a lot to be seen. It’s very entertaining from start to finish.”

Middle and high school students from across Wisconsin will descend upon Oconto Falls High School on Jan. 13 for the fifth annual Northeast Wisconsin VEX Robotics Challenge.

More than 30 teams will come together for a non-stop, action-packed day of competition where they will compete against each other with robots created from the VEX Robotics Design System. Participants will square off in this season’s game, “In the Zone,” developed by VEX Robotics Inc. and the Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation, which are considered leaders in educational and competitive robotics.

Qualifying matches are scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., followed by alliance selection and finals from 2:30-5 p.m. The awards ceremony will follow.

The competition is being hosted by Team Green 4-H Robotics Club from Oconto County. Admission is free and the event is at the high school, 210 N. Farm Road, Oconto Falls.

Some students and parents of Pulaski High School were surprised just before the holiday break when they received a text message about “cellphones being collected during morning scan after break.”

The Pulaski Community School District sent out word that the message was directed toward students who attend Casimir Pulaski High School in Milwaukee. After school officials researched the issue, they found that some student and staff accounts were linked to Casimir Pulaski High School in Milwaukee, rather than Pulaski High School in Pulaski.

The district contacted Remind.com to resolve the issue and planned to continue to work with the messaging service after holiday break until all accounts are affiliated with the correct school.

Local residents who took a test drive in a new Ford on Sept. 16 helped raise $4,200 for Panther Area Wrestling.

During the event at Peterson Ford, the carmaker donated $20 per adult who test-drove a vehicle, up to $6,000. For this first event, 210 adults came out for a total of $4,200. The funds will be used to send local athletes to team camps as well as purchase wrestling mats and other new equipment for the Oconto Falls wrestling program.

“We would like to thank both the Ford Corp. and most importantly Peterson Ford, which supplied us with the vehicles,” the club said. “Without Peterson Ford, we would not have been able to put on a great fundraising event. We would also like to thank those parents and wrestlers who helped out that day.”